


The Push of Seasons

by DoctorSyntax



Category: The X-Files
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Mirror of Erised, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 08:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5778481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorSyntax/pseuds/DoctorSyntax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or: five time Fox Mulder looks into a Mirror of Erised, and one time he decides not to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Push of Seasons

**Author's Note:**

> For the section that takes place in season 5, pretend Mulder hasn't switched back to his Sig and is still using the Smith & Wesson. This is important because Reasons.
> 
> The title is from "Half an Apple" by Ali Smith & the Trashcan Sinatras, which was among the songs playing on a loop while I wrote this.

I.

His father's new house comes fully furnished—the previous owners had died, and their daughter sells it as-is, overwhelmed by the prospect of breaking down their lives into parts and selling them bit by bit. His new bedroom has a set of bunk beds, a large dresser, and not much else. Although he won't be spending much time here, he wants to make it look nice for when Samantha is found, since the only other bedroom is his father's. (Years later, at the bottom of a bottle and the end of his schooling, he'll remember this moment, how he fixated on arranging a room so he could ignore everything that was happening outside of it. It isn't the first time and it wasn't the last, but it might have been the worst.)

During a trip to the attic, hunting for small things to make the room brighter and happier, he sees something the same shade of wood as the dresser, covered with a sheet and buried beneath a small heap of other furniture. When he digs it out it turns out to be a mirror, huge and filthy with grime. He can't see a thing in it. Burned into the wood that gently slopes across the top of the mirror is the phrase _ERISED STRA EHRU OYT UBE CAFRU OYT ON WOHSI._ It's no language he's ever seen, but he strokes his hand along the words anyway, as if that might be enough to reveal their secrets.

There's support beams running down the back; they look as if they're meant to fasten onto something, and he runs downstairs to check a theory. Sure enough, on the back of the dresser there's bolts that the beams will slide right through, and screws to tighten.

He can tell that if he's able to clean it, the mirror would be beautiful, so he drags it downstairs and props it against the bedroom wall while he scrubs at the grime. There's a couple of ancient spray bottles with peeling labels under the bathroom sink, and whatever's in the first one doesn't do much but whatever's in the second one does. He throws in a little bit of elbow grease and within a half-hour he has a beautifully clean mirror. As he wipes the last bit of gunk off it, he catches a glimpse of Samantha standing in the doorway behind his shoulder.

He spins around to face her, thinking his heart is about to split with joy, but she's gone. He runs into the kitchen after her, but she's not there either. He searches the whole house, top to bottom, but she's nowhere to be found. With each room his heart sinks lower and lower, and he begins to wonder if maybe he's having some kind of hallucination brought on by a combination of household cleaners. He goes back to his bedroom to check the active ingredients on the labels.

He can see her in the mirror's reflection again. She's _right there_ , smiling at him, but when he turns she's gone again.

Back to the mirror. She's there. He watches, scarcely able to breathe, as Samantha comes up to his reflection, hugging him. Involuntarily he touches his side, hoping to feel her there. And he almost can. Nothing physical, but an unquestionable presence just the same.

Her mouth is moving, like she's trying to say something, but he can't hear it. She's smiling, unhurt, and has her favorite stuffed bunny—the one she swore years ago that she was too old for—tucked under her arm.

She's safe. Wherever she is, she's safe.

For the past year he's been telling himself she's alive, unable to entertain the thought of anything else. But now he knows for sure, and what's more, she's _safe_.

"Sam," he whispers, and she nods. Like she can hear him. His voice cracks. "Sam, I'm so sorry. I tried to save you. I tried so hard." He wipes away the tear sliding down his cheek. "I'm going to find you," he says with fierce determination. "Okay? I promise."

She just hugs him tighter, turning to hide her face against his chest. His heart aches with longing. He's not sure how long he stands there, but too soon he's startled by a sound of a car in the driveway. His dad must be home from work.

He doesn't want either of his parents to know about this. They don't deserve it. So as quickly as he can, he gets the mirror mounted onto the dresser, fastens the screws, and throws a sheet over it.

 

II.

Michelmas term his second year, the nightmares intensify. After he'd found the mirror they'd reduced in frequency, and last break he hadn't had any in the entire four months he'd been home. But now they're back, worse than ever, and everything in his life is suffering for it.

When he can't sleep he lies awake in bed and pictures the mirror. Pictures seeing her face; his sister alive and well instead of scared and screaming.

He counts the days until the end of term, marking each of them on his calendar. Phoebe thinks he's counting down until he's done with schoolwork for a while. He's happy to let her. He skips his last day of classes and flies home to his father, not caring about the hurt in his mother's voice when he tells her. He hasn't let himself look at the mirror since the week he found it, when he realized just how dangerous of a habit it could become, but he doesn't care about that right now. These nightmares mean something. What if she's not okay anymore?

He takes a deep breath, pulls the sheet off the mirror and stares.

She hasn't aged. God, it's been almost four years since he last looked and she _hasn't aged_. She's still eight. Whatever this mirror is showing him, it's not really her. The certainty that he felt about her still being alive collapses in on itself, leaving a gaping hole in his chest.

What the hell is this thing? He'd been so sure it was some kind of conduit, a way to connect him to his sister, but obviously he was wrong. He begins a careful examination of the mirror, but nothing jumps out at him. After a while he's just staring through it instead of at it.

But then his eye catches on the final word, WOHSI, for long enough for him to realize that it's I/SHOW backwards. And ERISED, that's DESIRE. Which means the mirror's message isn't some long-dead language, just English in reverse.

_I/show /no t/yo ur/fac e/bu t/yo ur/he arts /desire_

I show not your face, but your heart's desire.

Fuck. Fuck everything. He's such an idiot. This whole time, it's only been showing him what he wants to see. How could he have been so stupid as to believe it was actually Samantha? He covers the mirror with its bedsheet, because he can't stand to look at it a moment longer. This time, he secures the sheet with bungee cords. He'd padlock it if he could.

He searches all the cupboards in the house and can't find a single thing to help him with this sudden, burning desire to stop existing. Nothing. If this was his mother's house, she'd suddenly find herself needing a refill of her sleeping pills, but since it isn't, he's out of luck.

Years later, the dresser goes with him to DC, but the sheet never comes off and it's not like he uses his bedroom anyway.

 

III.

In LA, he hits what may be an all-time low, and that's saying something.

He leaves Kristen sleeping and dresses quickly, intending to leave. But then he talks himself out of it—she still needs protecting, and it's not her fault he's falling apart. He was long before he met her. He just needs to get some air, put his head back on straight, and get the damn job done.

He's careful to stay quiet as he slides open the glass doors leading out onto Kristen's balcony. The night air is cool, but he can see wildfire raging in the distance. It looks the way he feels: out of control, all-consuming. Pure grief choking everything.

Without thinking, he climbs onto the railing and looks down, judging the distance to the ground. It's only the second floor, but with the house's arched ceilings, it's realistically more like being three stories up. There's about a fifty-fifty chance he'd survive, but he feels like taking it—and if he dives instead of jumps, the odds decrease drastically.

If he screams on the way down, maybe Kristen will tell everyone it was an accident.

Kristen catches his hand as he goes to raise it. He has no idea how long she's been there. She just looks at him, with no judgment _or_ compassion in her eyes. "Come back to bed. If you feel the same way in the morning, I won't stop you."

It's a fair bargain, he thinks dispassionately. Her hand tightens on his, the only real indication that she gives a damn, and while he doesn't care about her feelings, there isn't enough fight left in him to argue.

He follows her back inside, to bed, and dozes fitfully until she wakes him up a short while later.

*

When he gets back from California and Scully's still gone, he decides it might be time to look at the mirror again. He's drunk, desperate to see her again, and Samantha—desperate to remind himself why he's to blame for Scully being gone. The fact that what's in the mirror isn't real doesn't matter anymore.

He stumbles through his bedroom, shoving boxes aside, making as best he can a direct path to the dresser, long ago crammed in the corner and covered with junk. He unfastens the cords keeping the sheet on the mirror, but before he pulls everything away, he stops.

He's a six on the C-SSRS. He has been for years. He can no longer count on one hand the number of times he has taken the first step toward killing himself, but he's never been so close as he was in LA. He knows if Kristen hadn't stopped him, he wouldn't have stopped himself.

He goes back into the living room and locks the windows. Then he slides the clip out of his gun and tucks it in a drawer of his desk, right on top of a prescription for sleeping pills he's never filled. Takes a deep breath and heads back into the bedroom.

After uncovering the mirror he sits on a stack of boxes, resting his arms on the dresser and his chin on his arms. He stays there all night, ignoring the way his fingers itch for the gun in the kitchen, watching Samantha and Scully until he falls asleep.

 

IV.

Before he accepts Cancer Man's offer, he needs to look at the mirror. After seeing Samantha, he's too lost to be a good judge of what's in his own heart—he barely even knows which way is up, right now.

He rips the sheet off and what he sees shakes the foundation of everything he believes. He's almost not surprised; it's the kind of week he's been happening.

Samantha's not in the mirror, for the first time ever. And, also for the first time, neither is he.

This mirror that is capable of reaching into his consciousness and pulling out the truest desires of his heart is telling him that, deep down, he'd trade his life, his quest, everything he's spent the past twenty-four years searching for in exchange for a cancer-free Scully. Her likeness smiles at him. Her eyes aren't tired, her face isn't gaunt, her body's more than just bones in a bag of skin.

She is happy and well, and she is somewhere that he isn't. The symbolism is not lost on him.

Slowly he reaches to his hip, for his gun, not letting his eyes leave the mirror. He wants this image—Scully, healthy and beautiful—to be the last thing he ever sees.

It's a little strange, to know that he is looking in a mirror but not being able to see himself raise the gun to his head. Strange, but not a problem, because the barrel is cool against his temple and he's been here before. He can see in his mind's eye what it looks like, and anyway he prefers what's in front of him. It's the first time he's ever done this with bullets in the gun, but there's a first time for everything.

He breathes in. Scully's laughing, hiding her smile behind her hand, because that's what he wants to see most in the world. He can't hear it, but tucked in his heart are cherished memories of what it sounds like. He is as ready to die as he will ever be, so as he breathes out, he pulls the trigger.

The trigger does give way, but instead of an explosion of sound and color, all he gets is a soft click. It takes the space of one heartbeat to the next to realize what happened: the safety's on.

Can't even kill himself right.

He takes his frustration out on the gun, throwing it across the room to hit the wall. It falls to the carpet with a muffled thud. He has to get out of this apartment. He has to see her, the real her.

So he leaves the gun behind and sneaks into her hospital room. She's asleep, but that's good; he needs to be close to her but he'd rather she never see him broken like this. He clings to the lifeline that is her hand, crying, for what seems like hours. When he's too stiff to stay on the floor, he moves to the chair beside her bed, watching her sleep until he succumbs to exhaustion.

If any nurses come in during the night, they don't wake him.

 

V.

He knows the IVF has taken this time. He can feel it. He can feel it the way he felt that Samantha was alive, ignores the part of him that whispers how he was only right for six years. He lets himself into her apartment while she's at the doctor, because he wants to be there to celebrate with her the moment she gets back. He dozes off dreaming about how beautiful she'll look pregnant. The way her face will glow. The weight of their child in his arms.

He so rarely has dreams that aren't nightmares.

But within seconds of him waking, her distraught expression crushes him. It's not the worst pain he's ever felt—doesn't even come close. But it'll keep. When he least expects it, he'll think of her face in this moment and how it feels to know that all he ever does is let her down.

"Never give up on a miracle," he says. He wants to say more. Wants to call it their miracle, not just hers.

He doesn't want to give up, either.

When he gets home, he heads straight to his room and uncovers the mirror.

Over his shoulder his bedroom transforms into a nursery, a bright space with light colors. Scully, dressed in pajamas and a robe, is bent over a crib. She appears to be talking. Then she reaches in and picks up a baby—their baby—cradling it gently against her chest.

For three-quarters of an hour he just stands there, watching Scully interact with their child. She walks around the room with the baby, bouncing as if to settle it; she sits them both in the rocking chair and sings what can only be a lullaby; she breastfeeds, stroking the child's head with tenderness. All through it, she keeps glancing up and smiling.

As if she can see him looking in on them, and is glad of it.

He watches, and lets himself be filled with peace instead of longing, with love instead of self-hate. He watches, and when he pulls the sheet back down he knows he's found something to replace his nightmares, if only for a little while.

 

I.

He spends all of five minutes at his apartment when they get back from Georgia: just long enough to change his clothes and pack a bag. He doesn't know how much time he has left with Scully and the baby—he's not so stupid as to think he can stay without endangering them—but he knows he's going to draw it out until the last possible moment.

Right before he leaves to return to them, he decides to take a look at the mirror. He gets as far as grabbing a fistful of the sheet, but stops himself.

No. Whatever's under there, he knows, is already waiting for him in Georgetown. He'd rather see it in person.


End file.
